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Friday, June 29, 2012

This is the new fencing around the old cemetery at Greenfield. According to the map I posted with yesterday's post, I'm thinking this is the Gish Cemetery. And looking at the map still, it looks like Preston Cemetery is a little walk from this one. I always stop at this one thinking that there is only this one and another bigger/newer one that sits up on the hill. Time for another walk over to Greenfield for further investigation!

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Early Monday evening, after dinner, I bribed took the boys and Ozzy over to Greenfield for a nice walk. I've mentioned about a million times how much I love walking around this place. It once, years and years ago, belonged to a man named William Preston who had a big plantation on this property. The main house burnt down in the 70's if I remember correctly and there are a few buildings that still remain, such as a couple of slave cabins, old kitchen and a couple of cemeteries. Trails meander all over this beautiful piece of property. I noticed while there on Monday evening that some efforts have been started to preserve the old cabin and new fencing has been put up around the old cemetery.

This photo is from up on the hill where the slave cabins sit. Aren't the views just spectacular?!

Here's a map of the locations of buildings/trails. I'm going to take this with me the next time we go over and try to find/identify some of the other things I have seen yet.

Linking up with Rural Thursday :)

Oh and I wanted to share this Free Graphic Design Offer I got in an email. Go ahead and use it if you would like. I'm not using it but it looks pretty neat!

Thursday, June 21, 2012

On Sunday, Father's Day, we went to the Salem Red Sox game. There was also an equestrian show being held so on our way out we walked through the tents and saw some horses and we also noticed that things are starting to get ready for the Salem Fair which starts July 3rd! (notice the food trailer in the background) I can't wait!

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

This barn is on Stevens Road, Botetourt County. I've been wanting to take this little road for some time but wasn't sure if it was a private road or not until recently when my blogging friend/neighbor Anita from Blue Country Magic posted a picture from this road and so I asked her if it was a public road, which it is, so I tried it out. Glad I did! There's just so many of these back roads still waiting for me to take!

Friday, June 15, 2012

Another scene from Jamestown. If you look to the right of that building, in the front right corner, you will see what looks like they are making a small fence, but actually they are making a wall. That is called "waddle" and they weave the wood in and out of the slats.
Linking with Friday Fences

The settlers at Jamestown built the exact type of houses that had been common in England since the Middle Ages. They were framed with heavy, dressed timbers, constructed by experienced carpenters, who were brought along specifically for that purpose. The interstices were filled with waddle and daub – a mixture of clay and straw. The earliest houses had no foundations other than a heavy “mud sill” beam. The half timbers houses were inadequate for the cold, windy winters of the Chesapeake Bay region. As soon as the waddle & daub dried, cracks formed at the joints with the timbers and allowed the wind to blow through. The earliest fireplaces were evidently built out of clay and logs, because there were few fieldstones on Jamestown Island. The original houses at Jamestown had dirt floors and thatched roofs.

As Virginia’s colonists moved farther inland they are able to obtain fieldstones for constructing crude foundations and chimneys, mortared with clay. There were very, very few brick houses in Virginia until the 1700s. Bacon’s Castle, included in the attached slide show, was one of those few brick houses. The builders found it less expensive to import the brick makers and kilns than to import the bricks! Lime plaster and mortar were only used by the wealthiest of homeowners. For much of the 17th century, all hydrated lime for building construction was imported from England. The reason was that there is very little exposed limestone in Virginia’s narrow coastal plain and the Piedmont contains only igneous and metamorphic rocks.

Once explorers reached beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains, domestic lime did become available for construction. The Shenandoah Valley was underlain by dolomite limestone that was an excellent building material and source for lime. The crushed limestone rocks were stacked along with dried timbers into large cones. These cones were set on fire and the fires were allowed to burn red hot for several days, until most of the limestone was a grayish-white powder – a mixture of hydrated lime and ash. Masons dug pits near a planned construction site and filled them with slurry containing the crude lime, sand, a yellow-colored clay and water. The pits were covered. The masons would return in about 3-4 months to use the “slaked lime” for mortar. The word slime comes from “slaked lime.”

In 1621, the settlers of Plymouth Plantation forgot to bring along experienced carpenters! Each family was expected to build its own house. During the first winter, most of them were forced to live in the Mayflower. They also constructed half timber houses, in-filled with waddle & daub, but added crude clapboards (wood siding) to partially block the winds. Most of the original houses were poorly constructed, one room hovels, which frequently burned to the ground.

About a decade after the founding of Plymouth, large numbers of Puritan refugees began arriving in Massachusetts. The tradition of houses framed with heavy timbers continued, but waddle & daub walls faded away. They were replaced with tightly nailed clapboards on the exterior and vertical boards on the interior. New England continued the tradition of primarily building wood houses into the late 1800s.

Throughout the Colonial Period, brick houses were rare in the American colonies, except near seaports. Cargo ships used bricks and paving stones for ballast. The cost of transporting bricks and stones away from port cities, (and later, domestic brick manufacturers) made them too expensive for most home builders. Stone masonry houses became more common in the early 1700s, when domestic construction lime was more plentiful. The stones were usually either gathered or quarried very close to the house site.

Log construction was introduced by Swedish and Finnish colonists in the mid-17th century, but really did not become commonplace until the 1700s; and then, only in the western frontier. They were primarily built by settlers of modest means in regions distant from saw mills. Many of the log houses of the late 1700s were two story structures that mimicked the proportions of Georgian Style houses. (See the attached slide show.)

The only location, where stuccoed English Colonial houses can be found in number is along the coast of South Carolina. Charleston’s stucco tradition probably developed from the immigration of Caribbean planters and French Huguenots into the colony. Charleston also had the most cultural contacts with Spanish colonists in Florida and the Caribbean islands of any of the colonies.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Baseball season is coming to a close. Braden and Dalton have a game this evening and their last game will be Monday. Christian's last game is Saturday, a double header, and then we'll have the annual team pool party to attend. Something we always look forward to. He will have one makeup game though in a couple of weeks that the coaches are trying to work the deets out.

Already time to get signed up for football. Practices start the first of August.

Today I get to go meet up with my pal-ly wal-ly Di from Blue Ridge Gal for lunch. We are going to Olive Garden, yum :)

The boys and I managed to clean out a horrible corner of the basement this week. It was the corner that housed ALL of their old toys that they've collected over the years and don't play with anymore. After several trash bags loaded for the dump and a carload for Goodwill, we have a clean basement once again! I do have to go through the bookshelf down there as there are several books we can pass on, but otherwise it looks pretty good.

Monday, June 11, 2012

Saturday afternoon Christian had a couple of baseball games in Clifton Forge, Alleghany County. We've driven through Clifton Forge before to get to Douthat Park but I hadn't ever seen this part of it. The baseball field sits next to this gorgeous old high school. I tried to get more info on the school but didn't find much. There is a date of 1928 on it but I do not know how long it was open. I did see at one point, not too long ago, a woman wanted to turn this great old school into an art school but it became too costly and they ended up using a different building in Clifton Forge. I sure hope this building gets a second chance at a new life!

Friday, June 8, 2012

That's some Jamestown "fencery" for you right there. Did I mention how much I loved the field trip to Jamestown last week? I did! Can't wait to get back with the rest of the family and really "discover" Jamestown!

Thursday, June 7, 2012

The 2012 Lord Botetourt High School graduating class throwing their caps in the air in celebration! Ashlyn is in that group. I'm not going to lie, it's pretty rough seeing your child graduate high school. I cried at the very beginning when they played Pomp and Circumstance and then not too long after that they began to sing "I Hope You Dance" and then I lost it. That's our song, Ashlyn's and mine. I cried myself out during that, composed myself afterwards, then I was ok the rest of the night. What an exciting time for her and the rest of the graduates!

Has anyone figured out how to slow time down? I'd love to know!

Linking up with Rural Thursday, check it out!

Today is our first official day of summer! I have 4 sleeping kids right now!

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

James Fort serves as a representation of the colonial settlement during 1610-14, reflecting its predominantly military and commercial character. The fort includes dwellings, an Anglican church, a court of guard, a storehouse, a cape merchant’s office, provisioning areas and a governor’s house. Historical interpreters forge and repair metal objects in a blacksmith’s forge and, near one of the fort’s three bulwarks, show how matchlock muskets are fired. Seasonally and periodically, interpreters also cultivate food and tobacco crops, produce wood products using 17th-century-style tools, and demonstrate domestic activities such as sewing and meal preparation.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

How dumb am I? I went to Jamestown on Friday with Braden and Dalton's 4th grade class and did NOT think to look for a barn while there. I'm sure there had to have been a barn in the little village but I didn't even think to look. I mean really, how dumb was that?! So I had to venture down Cougar Lane on Sunday while on my way back from Ashlyn's Baccalaureate Service and I found this goodie! It's not a Jamestown barn but it will do!

Monday, June 4, 2012

A student checking the tobacco plant for worms. This had to be done twice a day and every leaf gone over.

JOHN ROLFE thought that Virginia might be an outstanding site for tobacco growth. Early attempts to sell Virginian tobacco had fallen short of expectations. Smokers felt that the tobacco of the Caribbean was much less harsh than Virginian tobacco.

Rolfe reacted to consumer demand by importing seed from the West Indies and cultivating the plant in the Jamestown colony. Those tobacco seeds became the seeds of a huge economic empire.

By 1630, over a million and a half pounds of tobacco were being exported from Jamestown every year.

The tobacco economy rapidly began to shape the society and development of the colony. Growing tobacco takes its toil on the soil. Because tobacco drained the soil of its nutrients, only about three successful growing seasons could occur on a plot of land. Then the land had to lie fallow for three years before the soil could be used again. This created a huge drive for new farmland.

Indentured servants became the first means to meet this need for labor. In return for free passage to Virginia, a laborer worked for four to five years in the fields before being granted freedom. The Crown rewarded planters with 50 acres of land for every inhabitant they brought to the New World.

Naturally, the colony began to expand. That expansion was soon challenged by the Native American confederacy formed and named after Powhatan.

Friday, June 1, 2012

What to do, what to do? It's Friday which means one of my new favorite theme days Friday Fences and it's also the first of the month which means "Theme Day" for our City Daily Photo group. CDP is the reason I started my photo blog in the first place so of course I am loyal to them first and I think I missed out on last month's theme day....this month's theme is "Tranquility". Last weekend, my husband was out of town and Ashlyn was off doing something with friends, you know teenagers with cars, they are never home...so anyway, the Buchanan Theater, my most favorite little theater in the whole world was playing Red Tails. This is a movie my boys had really been wanting to see. We had no plans, no where to be, no one expecting us to be somewhere so we had all the time in the world. We drove the 20 minute drive up to Buchanan and got there about a half hour early just so we could walk around downtown. I love Buchanan's downtown and even though all the cute little antique shops were closed, it was a warm summer's evening with some humidity hanging heavy in the air and my boys obliged me by walking up and down Main Street until the ticket booth opened.

Originally I had intended to use this photo for Friday Fences and as I realized that it was the first of the month and that I also needed a "Tranquil" shot, I decided this works for me. This breathes "tranquility" for me. It was such a wonderful, lazy summer's night, just me and my boys. :)

And a bonus shot of my boys from that night :)

As this post goes live, I'll be on our way to Jamestown with Braden and Dalton's 4th grade class. I won't get much of an opportunity to visit with you all on Friday but will try my hardest to get my visits in over the weekend!! Have a safe and fun weekend :)